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Accepted Paper:

Equality and morality in Melanesian markets  
Elizabeth Cox (N/A)

Paper short abstract:

Melanesian markets are key economic institutions in cities, towns and districts. Market operations reflect prevailing norms of gender-based inequality and exploitation. This session proposes increased women’s consciousness and agency and men’s responsiveness and morality as new norms for equality and development.

Paper long abstract:

Public markets in Melanesia are traditionally planned, managed by rural or urban councils. During the colonial period they operated with standard by-laws and taxing regimes adapted from the Commonwealth tradition. But the bylaws, rules and regulations have commonly fallen into decline and disuse post independence. Women have always dominated markets as vendors while men have tended to assume control of day-to-day management and finance. Weak local governance combined with low recognition of the importance of markets in local and household economies, and women's pivotal role within that, have resulted in neglect, stagnation and decline of market facilities, conditions and governance. Heightened disempowerment of women and criminal impunity have become the ‘new normal’. The propensity of men located at every level of local government structures, systems and staff, to exploit the gender relations of power and weak market governance for their own gain, reveals the immorality that underpins enduring inequality. Recent efforts to research, analyse, address and change the discriminatory status quo and enable women's economic and political empowerment in a new era for marketplace development are presented and appraised. Key principles for a renewed development paradigm centered on equality, participation, morality, and civility are proposed.

Panel Dwe01
Morality and marketplaces in the Pacific and Asia
  Session 1